300 migrants refusing food / Solidarity Day ~ 10-3/2011 (Greece)

You might have heard that Greece is a beautiful country to visit with delicious food and people with great hospitality. Be careful: this is not the whole truth. The reality for hundreds of thousands of visitors is completely different. There is a general threat of human rights’ violations. Expatriates and visitors, who cross the Greek borders, can be departed or transferred in detention centres for 2–4 months or longer. If and when these visitors are released, they are forced to work in agriculture, local industry, organized crime, or as street salesmen, without documents or any civil rights whatsoever. Visitors of Greece are warned about abuse, intolerance, hatred, slander and indiscriminate violence by the Greek State.

Greece is exploiting approximately 500,000 illegal immigrants and refugees to raise the nation’s miserable economics. Last year, nearly 140,000 immigrants crossed the Greek borders in a hope of better life. Most of them are going to be illegalized for years and treated as unwelcome contemporary slaves.

Since the 25th of January, 300 immigrants who work and live in Greece for many years started a nationwide hunger strike in Athens and Thessaloniki. They claim the legalization of all undocumented immigrants of Greece. Their struggle is a struggle of all immigrants, workers and citizens of the world.

The 10th of March will be the 45th day of their hunger strike, but the Greek State has not yet responded to their rightful claims!

We call people in Greece and throughout the world to carry out civil disobedience actions on the 10th of March in solidarity with the 300 hunger strikers. We ask everyone to target their actions against Greek soft spot-tourism: 15% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is coming from tourism. In fact, tourism and migration are two sides of the legal right of freedom of movement.

We suggest an easily attainable target that you people can find almost in every country: Greek National Tourism Organization. You can e.g. demonstrate, blockade, squat, spread leaflets or carry out other creative actions in front, inside or around GNTO offices.